Which animations in paticular bothered you Monk? Personally I thought that infantry seemed to do quite well (they certainly responded to orders faster). It was cavalry that annoyed me, they seemed to move much, much too quickly for my tastes.

The mount/dismount animation worked well I thought. And the cannon loading and firing animations weren't too bad either.

I'm glad you got the demo to run more smoothly. If you play it on a high - power machine you can really appreciate it a lot more I think. It's a shame CA didn't optimise it very well.